


Ground Control

by Acai



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Fantastic, First Meetings, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, reflective drabble from angus' point of view i guess, who knows anymore, wowow fifteen whole fics in this fandom now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 12:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10335071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/pseuds/Acai
Summary: Sometimes Angus wants to save Gregg, and other times he knows he only needs to support him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A nonsense drabble conceived at inane hours. I love them. There's like twenty drawings and eleven fics currently so...that means it's time to devote my life to art and writing for this fandom until there's at least a little more content cause...i love these boys....find me on tumblr @aobajosighs. this is very not edited...

            There are always times when Angus wishes he could save Gregg.

Which, he supposes, doesn’t sound terribly wonderful out of context. It’s not as if Gregg is dying. There’s nothing coming to harm him. The only thing Gregg really _needs_ to fear is the law and himself, and Angus was pretty sure he wasn’t scared of either of those things.

It doesn’t really matter, how they met. Angus couldn’t remember it. He didn’t think Gregg remembered either. It was years ago and hadn’t been significant at the time. Angus _does_ remember seeing Gregg for the first time, though, when Gregg had walked into science half an hour late on the first day of school. He remembered how unbothered he looked, calmly leaning on the doorway while he told the teacher while he’d been late.

There was a lot of reasons why they probably wouldn’t have ever spoken to each other, though. Gregg was a wildfire of a boy who didn’t fear consequences and who lacked impulses. Angus had never seen him speaking to anybody, anyway, so he had just assumed he was wildly electric and alone. There hadn’t been any reason for them to talk, and Gregg hadn’t been important.

The only person that Gregg _did_ talk to was a girl who was, if at all possible, more wild than him. Angus knew her well enough that he’d been given a threat or two about what would happen if he made a move on her boyfriend, and the threats were daunting enough that Angus had never even considered _speaking_ to him, much less _flirting_ with him.

(They were young, anyway. Hardly old enough to realize that he might have even wanted to flirt with _anybody_ , much less a boy like that.)

But the girl had moved on to other towns with different people and Angus had moved on to studying for colleges (there had never been such a thing as ‘too early’) and Gregg had moved on to hanging out with a new pair of girls who were just the slightest bit less terrifying.

Angus thinks that it was a year later when they _did_ speak, but it was obligatory and driven only by the fact that they sat next to each other in a hugely participatory class. Angus knows when he began tolerating Gregg, though, and he remembers it well. It’s hardly ideal, because they’re standing in a science classroom and they’re cutting up worms and Gregg is laughing because of how the bodies wiggle when they’re poked, but Angus remembers wanting to laugh at the way that the other boy doubled over and wheezed when he laughed.

The school year ends and somehow—he can’t remember how, but he knows he’d been nervous—he gets Gregg’s phone number. They don’t talk much at all at first. Gregg sends him a photo of something dead he’s found on the road and Angus makes a bland reply. He’s not good at texting and he knows it. Gregg’s told him a hundred times not to punctuate his sentences, but Angus can’t help writing a ‘see you soon’ message as if it’s going to be graded by a college professor.

Still, he must have been alright at it.

Angus doesn’t really remember how they became friends. He doesn’t recall the process. But he does recall Mae and Bea and bands and forests and studying for tests.

And he doesn’t really know why he studied so hard.

He’d spent a lifetime working hard to keep perfect grades and polishing a good community record, but for what? Angus isn’t going to college. He doesn’t think _anybody_ in Possum Springs goes to college. There’s nothing around, and the school systems aren’t great by a long shot. Even if the schools were perfect, though, and even if there was a college right across the road, Angus wouldn’t have gone. He couldn’t quite imagine having enough money for a full week of dinner, much less enough money to go to college and get a degree.

Possum Springs feels like a cage, sometimes, and Angus isn’t sure if there’s a way to open the gate and get out.

It feels sometimes as if the only things in Possum Springs are the broken buildings and bitter people and lost opportunities.

And now, it seems, there’s Gregg, too.

Gregg doesn’t study, doesn’t try hard for anything at all, and doesn’t follow a single law, apparently. He’s accepted the fact that there’s no future in their town and no cops to try and stop them, and Angus can’t help but admire that. He doesn’t stop Angus from working hard though, and so Angus continues studying and working like he can get somewhere if he just tries hard enough.

 

Angus is nothing like Gregg. Gregg is wild and electric and burning and free, and Angus is tethered and hardworking and a try-hard of a kid who dresses like every day is a press conference and texts like every text is an award-winning essay. But somehow they work. Angus fears, sometimes, that they’ll stop working someday. He spent thirteen years of his life without Gregg, but now he can’t really imagine a _week_ without his friend.

Their senior year comes and Angus applies for every college within a five-hour radius of their town.

He doesn’t get accepted to a single one, and he hasn’t got the money to apply anywhere else. Gregg shows up with a pizza and a collection of bad movies and everything is okay for a little while.

That’s what Gregg does, Angus thinks. He causes an awful lot of damage, but he cleans up just as much of it. He goes out and breaks glass all day and then shows up to make things okay for as long as he’s there for.

Angus isn’t _sad—_ that’s not really what it is. He’s not unhappy, just stuck. The world feels too dull, like he studied the wonder out of it. Gregg spews facts that Angus is fairly sure aren’t true at all, but he doesn’t correct them because they make things a little bit more exciting when they can both pretend that if the wind blows hard enough Pangea will put itself back together.

 

Gregg is a good person, and Angus doesn’t really care what anybody else says. Gregg doesn’t care that Angus spends a lifetime studying for a college he’ll never go to, and Gregg doesn’t care that Mae carries a journal with her and draws them all animals (he’s a bear, and he’s not sure if he should be offended) and Gregg doesn’t care that sometimes Bea snaps at everybody. He’s just Gregg, an electrically-charged wildfire that spreads itself out over the entirety of Possum Springs.

He’s happy all the time it seems. Positive and friendly and light enough to float on water and never drown. Gregg saves people with grins and crimes and pizza, and Angus isn’t sure how anybody manages to _not_ fall in love with him.

And Gregg gets sad, too.

He gets sad in the middle of the night when all the lights are out and the only thing they can hear is the sound of cars in the street putting down the road quietly in the dark. Angus wakes up to crying and never helps with the ease that Gregg helps with, but he tries anyway. And Gregg gets sad sometimes, a bitter-tasting sadness without a reason that makes him skip school and sleep on the couch all day because he’s too sad to do anything else.

He gets other kinds of sad, too. The kind of sad that he gets when Mae leaves for college is different than the bitter sadness, and the sadness that comes over him when his dog dies is different than the sadness that makes his fists grab Angus’ shirt at four in the morning while he cries so hard he can’t breathe.

Angus wants to save Gregg the way that Gregg has managed to save Angus.

Angus doesn’t suppose he needed saving, but he doesn’t suppose Gregg does, either. But that doesn’t mean that Angus isn’t happier here and now, and it certainly doesn’t mean that Gregg can’t be happier, too.

He says that he wants to go. He says he wants to leave Possum Springs and go _anywhere but here,_ because there’s nothing really _here_ anymore.

Towns drop dead and burn out like stars, and Possum Springs died a long time ago. They’re all just waiting for the moment when it stops burning all together and there’s not a light in their spot of the galaxy anymore.

They work hard and long, and the pay isn’t good but it’s there and it all goes into that glass jar on the counter of their kitchen at home. Gregg keeps breaking the law and Angus keeps studying and everything is alright. They’re together and everything is alright.

Gregg hits a bad slump and college doesn’t work for Mae, so she comes home and shows up at the Snack Falcon and Gregg comes home beaming like he’s won the lottery.

Angus wonders sometimes if that would even make him happier. He doesn’t even know if it’s _possible_ for Gregg to be happier than he already is.

 

He never had a problem with their apartment, but Angus is almost shocked at how happy he is to be leaving it. Years are long and twenty two years feels like a hundred and nine, but Angus thinks all twenty two of his years have led up to these moments. They won’t see Bea and Mae as often, and they won’t have any of the things in that rundown little town they’ve stayed in all their lives, but that’s fine by both of them.

Gregg’s head is practically sticking out the window while they drive.

The apartment waiting for them has white walls and white carpet and Angus stares at it until Gregg jokes that their hair will contrast horribly with the color if they forget to vacuum.

They hang up Christmas lights in the middle of June just so that their walls will glow with the whole myriad of colors they’ve strung up, and Gregg has taken an assortment of old posters and signs from his old work and hung them up. Angus doesn’t know if it’s supposed to be a joke, nostalgic, or both. He doesn’t ask questions.

They’re too tired to bring the mattress in, and so they sleep on the couch in a mess of limbs and the old blankets that they’d dragged in. Gregg smells like caramel and sea salt and his steady breathing is warm on Angus’ neck.

Sometimes Angus wants to save Gregg, and other times he thinks Gregg’s fine just the way he is. He’s a little bit like a flower, needing care and support. He’s like the sun, and Angus wonders if he should wear sunglasses when he looks at him. Angus will keep giving him support, and he knows that their other friends will do exactly that same thing, and he knows that they’ll get there someday.

He isn’t quite sure where _there_ is, but he guesses they’ll find it when they get there.

Sometimes Angus wants to save Gregg, and other times he thinks Gregg’s fine just the way he is.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing & Reblogs [tumblr]: Aobajosighs  
> Art: Aobajosketches  
> ask box is open for writing prompts or requests. thank you for reading.


End file.
